Toonamiguy321

Unless they are making the change very soon, it’s still gonna be Primal. It’s looping on the 22nd, MiA needs two slots on the 11th. That’s only 3 weeks into the re-rerun Now list the many times they could have done 2x premiers but threw a wrench into it. There were examples in 20 and 21. Two of those are turn of the New Years examples, and Gemushitto wasnt an acquisition. So that’s two times where it happened naturally. Even one of those is hard to count, as AoT was a mandatory airing. Id like to have faith that they have two shows lined up for February but it’s hard to with their track record the past few years. We are in a situation where there are no possible upcoming sequels they could slot into those slots either, so that means either shopping around for two brand new to Toonami titles, or going backwards to 1-2 sequels they have since passed over. It’s a new year, so they should have an untouched budget to secure some shows with, but who knows how the 2023 budget meeting went for the block.

They have a phobia of starting two new shows the same night for some reason. I can see them either staggering them, or if they do boot Primal for the night so both end the same night, we will only get one new show and the other slot will go to another rerun. AS has really cut corners on April Fools the past few years. Yule Log felt more like an April Fools style premier IMO. I’m expecting another 2 hour half assed event this year as well. They are likely satisfied with Toonami being at midnight at that means there is zero pressure to think up something for TOM to do.

These days, once it’s “schedule official” that’s usually set in stone. It could be pulled early of course, but for what? I really hope their intent here isn’t to keep a slot perpetually “open” for AoT. Or, on the topic of an “open” slot, Made in Abyss does have another hour long finale episode in February. My theory about Progressive and Alternative being unable to air on cable only continues to grow in likelihood. See, if I could have faith we won’t be repeating this exact same process next month, I wouldn’t sweat what is happening with 2:30. But this is likely the easiest schedule change of 2023, and they are already blowing it. Two brand new premiers on the same night? One of which will not be AoT? I’d sooner believe I’m tonights lotto winner.

I didn’t doubt you would end up being right, but I’m still disappointed. But ok fine, if Demarco wants us to raise our expectations, let’s do a little bit of that. A rerun has no reason to not be announced on time, so let’s theorize what new show they have planned. Something I was kicking around earlier today, by next Saturday, that will be close to the 1 year anniversary of them picking up One Piece again. Perhaps they needed to wait for a full year to pass before renewing a new batch of OP episodes, and we will soon see the return of it airing 2 episodes a night. Nobody will miss Naruto down at 2:30 as it’s starting a 23 week stretch of filler here soon.

I can agree there. Not sure how they marketed it in Japan, but the way it was in the US was basically “the guy who worked on Bebop worked on this”. That should have just been a bonus, not their core selling point. That warped expectations out of the gate, and it took a couple of months for it to break the “is this a Bebop sequel?” notion among casual viewers. Demarco has always had a bad habit of putting too much weight on creators, rather than the work itself. I can guarantee you that the vast majority of people who love a certain franchise love the franchise itself, not it’s creator. Just cause a creator made one beloved franchise doesn’t mean everything they crank out is going to be met with the same praise and administration. Market the creation, not the creator.

If the discussion was about it being just a financial flop, he would be right on the money. Even back in 2014, the fact that it’s world premier rights had been sold to Adult Swim was a pretty big red flag that this didn’t have high expectations among Japanese audiences. Why I think he is too hard on it is because while it didn’t make tons of money, it does have a big following of fans. As I noted, every season there are multiple shows that are financial failures because they are shit and most everyone agrees so they don’t sell. Dandy may not have sold well, but it has a modest fanbase. That’s no failure in my book. This was a much more noticeable issue in the second cour. Personally, I don’t think those types of episodes are a bad thing, but when you are labeled as a comedy and then are frequently not a comedy, it’s jarring to the viewer. And it’s not a case of “we told jokes that weren’t funny” but was a “we didn’t tell jokes at all”. Identity is important, and that was a big issue in the second half. Have to disagree with this take. Stuff like OPM didnt just suddenly take off when it’s anime started. It had a decent following to the webcomic long before the anime started. Anime original projects like Dandy are always on an extreme uphill battle. If it’s first bundle of episode didnt resonate with the audience extremely well, it would have flopped just the same. If you want Dandy to survive in today’s market, Dandy needs to be an average 20 something living a boring life when suddenly he is hit by a truck and transported to another world where the goddess of reincarnation gives him cheat powers to access all the worlds booty. AotY, with 4 more seasons in the works.

Nothing new. It’s been airing periodically during AEW for a few months now. Probably would do the block better by advertising the actual OP arc we are on and having MiA and MHA present in it.

He is being too hard on himself. Among western viewers who watched it on Toonami, it’s beloved. Over the years, I have seen very few negative discussions about Space Dandy. At the very worst, there are specific episodes people didn’t mesh with. Id wager most Toonami fans would rank Dandy somewhere in their top 10 memories of all time from the revived block. Where it struggled was with Japanese audiences. Just never got it’s wheels rolling over there. I know, that’s the “main” audience even though it premiered on Toonami first. I don’t think it’s fair to consider the show a total dud just because of that though. Yea, there is no convincing a Japanese studio to make more when it’s well documented it doesn’t appeal to the Japanese, but it still found solid footing on the other side of the ocean. That’s no flop. Every single anime season there are multiple shows that the entire world thinks are garbage. If your show was beloved by one country, that’s better than a lot of shows could wish for.

I joke, but I don’t disagree. A better metric is long overdue. That said, this feels like it’s coming way too late for cable. Seen it happen plenty of times where something looks like it’s going to be huge based on social media interaction, then it hits the air and flops because all that engagement was an extreme minority shouting as loud as they possibly could. We need something that is based on actual individual viewer numbers, both from cable and streaming options. Nobody cares if 20 twitter accounts are going nuts for a show when all 20 are one persons botfarm. And what I think is most important, these numbers need to be PUBLIC. It’s not going to stop them from arbitrarily cancelling a bunch of content, but if we can see the numbers, fans can somewhat hold them accountable if they cancel a show doing well. When everything is behind the scenes it’s too easy for them to claim a show was doing bad and just leave it at that. It would also help with discourse when a genuinely low performing show gets canned and it’s diehard fans think it was canned for some other reason because the prospect of it doing bad is too much for them to accept.

Hey hey hey, don’t knock that tactic, it’s been keeping Toonami alive for half a decade now.

For those who wanted it to be Facebook official, here it is. No changes. We should be getting an update this week about what replaces Primal in 2 weeks. I’m gonna be pretty pissed if it’s looping around again.

If Prog and Alt end up in the rerun slot, either in 2 weeks or 4 weeks, I’m not going to be shocked at all. The theory is hardly out of nowhere. Their long term disappearance, especially when we have had multiple times where content was sparse, casts doubt on their availability to air them. Yes, the original hasn’t come out in some time either, but unlike Prog and Alt, the original has rerun on ASA/Toonami more times than I can count. They have long since got their money’s worth out of that license. Not so much the ones they forked out who knows how much to have created. A year ago I might have argued that they actually felt some shame for dragging a beloved title through the mud then taking a wet shit on it, and quietly sealed that mistake away never to be seen again. But we have two more seasons incoming, so we know they learned absolutely nothing and that can’t be the reason.

You would think that, but they didn’t hesitate for a moment to get a rerun in for Jack, Fena, Black Lotus or Shenmue. The only reason HCC didn’t get one is because it’s so short they were able to squish it into a marathon night. FLCL is the only one to have immediately gone into the vault. The fact that they didn’t even roll them out in 2020, or tried running them in lieu of the 18th Black Lotus partial marathon last year, implies to me there is something with them that stops them from airing on cable. They can stream them no trouble, it’s the cable run that is the issue.

If it’s up on TVPassport and Zap2it, that means AS submitted the schedule. If they had new plans for 2:30, the entire Toonami timeslot would be blank. Now, that doesn’t mean anything is set in stone. AS can, and has often, changed a schedule after submitting it to third party schedule services. It’s extremely rare to see it happen with Toonami though, as they are normally treating any schedule shuffle as top secret classified information by blanking the entire schedule. What may have happened was the idea to burn off Primal/squeeze in Yule Log came very late. This is further supported by Demarco’s speculative tweets about possibly landing a movie for the holidays. So the plan changed and it was too deep into the holiday season to get it changed on these schedules. Another possibility to consider, a lot of people see ending Primal and blowing through FLCL 1 as a means to get a Progressive/Alternative run on the schedule. However, we shouldn’t discount the possibility that there is some kind of legal roadblock preventing these seasons from airing on TV again based on the fact they have never been seen again since 2018. Maybe that was the plan, and they couldn’t figure it out so are falling back on Primal till they find some alternative programming.

According to online schedules, Primal will continue its run from where it left off before the marathon on January 7th.

But this was a rare instance of no children suffering for the entire episode. Unless you count the part where Riko had to cut off an important part of her body

Ouch, that’s a huge dip for MHA coming off last week where it did really good. Hopefully in the new year we can see better from it more consistently. I think this also the first time we have seen Made in Abyss be a problem show. That was one of its more actiony episodes too, I wonder what turned people off of it.

Best 1. AssClass and MiA right out of the gate in the new year. We started off running 2. TOM picking up a new ship and getting back on the move 3. MHA S6 beating the odds and giving us a sliver of hope that CR isn’t a guaranteed prison for a show 4. I enjoyed Shenmue even if it’s not the most engaging story Worst 1. Primal reruns and the summer content drought. Place the blame wherever, the bottom line was it sucked ass 2. The 11 month old bumpers. The packaging is the life of the block, and them being untouched for so long made everything really stale 3. The loss of momentum after January. They set a high bar at the start of the year and just never were able to keep up with it 4. Uzumaki not being delivered on the promised date for the 4th time in a row. And an extra one I don’t want to list as a “worst” but more just a let down, Housing Complex C really gripped me at the start then just fumbled hard in the end.

Eh, I’m not in a huge hurry. I’m gonna give them till February, that will give us a feel for how things will go in 2023. After that though, between obligations, originals, and their standard targets, there just isn’t enough flexibility left in the schedule for me to hold out on those shows. In the event they do come, I’ll have watched them in the spring and they show up summer/fall.

Demarco did say a couple days ago that Chainsaw Man and Spy X Family are two of the most heavily requested shows for the block currently, so I’m sure they have been noticed. If they are attainable goals is another question.

I do the same, but I do put a time limit on how long I will wait compared with opening slots on the block. For example, I have held off on Akudama Drive because Demarco specifically said he liked it a year or so ago. I’m thinking if we don’t see it take one of the 3 upcoming open slots (honestly i don’t expect it to) I’ll probably watch it on my own since it does look interesting. I’ll be doing the same for Chainsaw Man and Bleach, but I’ll probably be shrinking my wait window from what it used to be, cause I’m looking at some stuff on my “might be Toonami” list that’s been there way too long like JJK and Tokyo Revengers and realizing it’s been on there for years and I’m probably waiting for nothing.

You’d be shocked at how many people are “Toonami only” in regards to anime. It seems impossible but there are genuinely people out there who don’t know about anime unless Toonami spoonfeeds it to them. Yea we have seen CR ads in the past, but this one started about the same time as MHA started. If CR wants us to believe they are actually changing their tune, some of those shows besides MHA will appear on the block soon as a form of cross promotion that actually benefits both sides.

I think it’s more they are just trying to poach lingering Toonami exclusive viewers by showing there is a better way. Perhaps part of the agreement to air MHA was to start running CR ads.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to start normalizing Saturday nights with no Toonami at all. If it’s a Blum/Dana budget thing, just give us a silent night. Maybe this would even be the long needed kick in the pants to not waste everyone’s time with frivolous marathons on minor/not near Saturday holidays. Christmas and New Years? Absolutely. But it might be time to shelve all the others permanently. I do wonder though, we haven’t seen recent marathon numbers, but we know marathon nights are usually nothing short of abysmal in performance. I can certainly see the angle from the new bosses of wanting some level of performance maintained on those nights. And I dunno, I feel like the MHA S6 news was pretty well regarded positively by most of the community. Even seen some of the types that are usually irked by predictable shonen pickups happy, purely because of it being a positive step towards Crunchyroll possibly becoming more willing to work with the block. I feel like the fandom appears to be generally negative in recent years because of how many negative changes the block has seen in that time. After January, Toonami had quite a bit more L’s than W’s in 2022. So that’s conditioned people to expect the worst. Hopefully the February shuffle can continue on the positive wave started by MHA

It’s been airing sporadically since last week, I believe it did appear one time during the block itself. Probably as close as we will get to seeing Chainsaw Man, Uzaki, and Spy X Family on cable.